By and large, animation gets a bum rap. The average filmgoer long ago decided that the medium catered either to kids or art house snobs, and Hollywood has spent the last few decades marketing accordingly. Luckily, it's a medium that also has some of the most fervent fans—ones who endlessly support the films and keep the animated flame burning—such as the San Francisco Film Society, which will host the San Francisco International Animation Festival (SFIAF) November 11-15, 2009 at the Landmark Embarcadero Center Cinema. SFIAF's fourth edition boasts four narrative features, a selection of shorts, and live events; a great way to become better acquainted with the overlooked genre if you're unfamiliar, and—if you're already on the hook—an opportune chance to see some of the best animated films of the year on a big screen.
The biggest draws will likely be SFIAF's features: First up, The Fantastic Mr Fox. Based on the eponymous novel by Roald Dahl, Wes Anderson's latest journeys away from live-action but retains all of the director's trademark eccentricities thanks to voice-acting from many of the actors who frequent his hit films. Shot entirely in stop-motion, Fox is the story of the titular Mr. Fox, a retired crook who risks his happy home life for one last hit on the three meanest farmers in town. Oceans 11 with George Clooney as a fox?! I can't confirm such a fantastic allegation, but I'll be attending this screening myself and my fingers are crossed. The film may open wide just a week or so later, but why not see it early and think up a swell question to ask Anderson (who is expected to attend)?
Next on the schedule is the irreverent Belgian import Panique au Village / A Town Called Panic. Twitch teammate Todd Brown writes: " 'Juvenile' and 'absurd' are perfectly good descriptors when talking about Panique, though only if they are accompanied by 'brilliant' and 'hysterical'." I've been anticipating Panique for quite some time since quickly discovering the English dub on Atom Films. Each episode follows the adventures of three toy figures—Cowboy, Indian and Horse—who share a house. Its simple setup has a big part in creating the sort of universal comedy that has crossed culture lines, the series having swiftly gained support in the UK from Aardman Animation (the studios behind Wallace and Gromit). Will the five-minute episodes translate well to feature length? Early word leans towards the positive.
A new Mamoru Oshii is always big news for animation fans, though you might be surprised to hear his latest is a samurai biopic. Stepping back from the usual action and sci-fi fare of previous efforts such as Storm Riders and Ghost in the Shell, Musashi: The Dream of the Last Samurai is more a detailed examination of the political climates that conspired to create the man who became the legendary samurai Musashi, rather than a straightforward story about his life. Using an anachronistic narrator to steer the film from sounding too much like an animated essay, Oshii's script explores both the myths and the facts but ultimately comes no closer to understanding the true identity of the mysterious samurai. Even when the film glorifies more than enlightens, Oshii's fascination with his subject shines, making Musashi an engrossing exercise in style and structure. At Twitch, Todd Brown stages his complaints while Simon Laperriere considers "ideal" the film's description as "an animated encyclopedia … since the film uses a structure similar to a book covering a wide variety of subjects all linked more or less with the same theme."
Closing the fest is Tarik Saleh's Metropia, a near-future mystery flick starring Vincent Gallo as a dissatisfied call-center employee who begins hearing voices after using a new brand of shampoo. As a slow-burn sci fi noir, Metropia is often cryptic and scattershot; but, anyone familiar with the genre knows better than to expect events to unfold in any other way. Saleh delivers enough intrigue and double-crosses, and such an interesting style of animation—big-eyed photorealistic characters that move almost like marionettes—that the plot's contrivances are negligible. At Twitch, Todd Brown writes: "Metropia fits beautifully into the canon of dystopic literature, a grim but thoroughly plausible vision of the future, a future in which progress leads to squalor rather than prosperity" whereas—though Simon Laperriere admires Metropia's "astounding" animation—he concludes the effort "disappoints."
If shorts are more your thing, Saturday brings a few compilations. The most eye-catching is The Best of Annecy (marking selections from The Annecy International Animated Film Festival), and Walt Disney's Alice Comedies, a selection gleaned from the 56 classic shorts made between 1923 and 1927 that helped launch the Disney Studios.
Of related interest: indieWIRE has published the 20 films submitted for consideration for Best Animated Feature at the Academy Awards®, including The Fantastic Mr. Fox and Panique au Village / A Town Called Panic.
Cross-published on Ornery-Crosby and Twitch.
Sufficiently entertaining, but just so, Blood: the Last Vampire relies heavily on its production pedigree and its existing anime franchise to promote its vampire adventure. Renowned producer Bill Kong—responsible for such sumptuously mounted vehicles as Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon; Hero; House of Flying Daggers; Curse of the Golden Flower; and Lust, Caution—teams up with director Chris Nahon (Kiss of the Dragon) for this English language adaptation of the popular award-winning anime film of the same title by Production I.G., released worldwide in 2000, and directed by Hiroyuki Kitakubo (the key animator for Katsuhiro Otomo's Akira). The story is set in Japan during the fall of 1966, when the United States involvement in Vietnam has turned into a full-scale conflict. A stunning 16-year-old girl named Saya, wearing seifuku and armed with her katana, is sent by a mysterious "organization" to hunt down vampires that are hiding amongst the inhabitants of the Yokota U.S. Air Force Base, a small American enclave 30 km from Tokyo. Saya's youthful exterior hides the tormented soul of a 400-year-old "halfling."
Mamoru Oshii (Ghost in the Shell 2: Innocence; The Sky Crawlers) served as the Visual Concept Director of the original anime film, and created a light novel in Japan in October 2000, entitled Blood: The Last Vampire: Night of the Beasts. The novel was published in English in North America in 2005. A single-volume manga sequel, Blood: The Last Vampire 2000 written by Benkyo Tamaoki, was published in Japan in 2001 by Kadokawa Shoten, and in English by Viz Media in November 2002 with the title slightly modified to Blood: The Last Vampire 2002. Three Japanese light novel adaptations of the series have also been released, along with a video game. In 2005, Sony and Production I.G. announced the creation of Blood+, a 50-episode anime television series. Considered an alternate universe telling of Blood: The Last Vampire, it has only minor connections and similarities to the film. Blood+ premiered in Japan on October 8, 2005 on MBS/TBS and aired until September 23, 2006.
In the filmic adaptation of this ongoing lineage, Blood: The Last Vampire is given a full-blown billowing robes and startle editing treatment. Eschewing the over-the-top (and fun!) histrionics of Tokyo Shock, Blood caters to beauty instead, which—though admittedly visually arresting—results in a vampire story rendered somewhat anemic for being exhaustively sumptuous. Following the original anime's basic premise, Saya (played by kickass Korean actress Gianna) is a "halfling", born from a human father and a vampire mother. For centuries she has been a loner, obsessed with using her samurai skills to rid the world of vampires, all the while knowing that she herself can survive only on blood like those she hunts. When she is sent to an American military base in Tokyo by The Council, a clandestine organization for whom she works, Saya immediately senses that this may be her opportunity to finally destroy Onigen (Japanese model and actress Koyuki), the evil matriarch of all vampires. Using her superhuman strength and her sword, Saya begins to rid the base of its evil infestation in a series of spectacular and elaborate showdowns staged by famed action director Corey Yuen (X-Men; Kiss of the Dragon; The One). However, it is not until she forms her first human friendship in centuries with Alice (Allison Miller), the young daughter of the base's general, that Saya learns her greatest power over Onigen may well be her ability to make a human connection. Or so the press notes claim.
Twitch teammate Stefan's admirably polite review asks: "But seriously, do we need another half-vampire, half-human hybrid being for the big screen, even though this has anime roots?" Like myself, he tried really hard to find redeeming factors for the film, and we both favored the same scene: "What I thoroughly enjoyed," he writes, "even if it was rather old school and done countless of times, is the ninja attack set in a leafy forest. Execution was swift, with a real sense of peril, up until the point Saya enters the picture, without which it was a treat to see her guardian and trainer Kato (Yasuaki Kurata) take on a hooded army relying heavily on cunning and trickery." Also at Twitch, is an interview with producer Kong by guest contributor Diva Velez.
Fangoria's Michael Gingold, on the other hand, is unsparing in his objection to Nahon's adaptation, writing that the film has no tangible joy, only a "wearying sense of a filmmaking team desperate to cash in on a marketable title." Saya's human sidekick, a nurse in the original, has shifted to a general's daughter in this film and Gingold characterizes her as "an obvious sop to making this film more accessible to the American youth audience." He wonders why producer Kong—who has done "just fine Stateside without any Caucasian faces"—should elect to do so in Blood? Complaining that the film has paid more attention "to camera filters than to story, character or basic coherence", Gingold likewise objects to the slice-and-dice editing that obfuscates Yuen's trademark action choreography "to the point where you can't follow what's going on and quickly cease to care." Peter DeBruge concurs at Variety: "[W]hile Yuen orchestrates at least four noteworthy confrontations, Nahon's longtime editor Marco Cave seems unfamiliar with Asian action sensibilities, reducing all but one of the fight scenes into a flurry of cuts."
Equally distracting is the globular computer-generated blood shed by Saya's sword, which—as Gingold points out—"is nonetheless not quite as phony-looking as the digital monster that fights the heroine through a series of setpieces"; a winged demon monster that DeBruge describes as "rendered in herky-jerky CG, as if in tribute to stop-motion wizard Ray Harryhausen." If only the homage had been conscious and the setpieces less derivative of Underworld:Evolution, Blade, and many others which fans of the genre can make a sport of identifying. In yet a further bit of derivative marketing, the film's byline—"Now that she's here, there will be blood"—doesn't promise that now that she's here, there will be a very good movie. Ah well. Better luck next life.
Blood: The Last Vampire opens this evening, July 10 at the Metreon in San Francisco, and Landmark's Shattuck Cinemas in Berkeley. Photos courtesy of Samuel Goldwyn Films.
Cross-published on Twitch.
By and large, animation gets a bum rap. The average filmgoer long ago decided that the medium catered either to kids or art house snobs, and Hollywood has spent the last few decades marketing accordingly. Luckily, it's a medium that also has some of the most fervent fans—ones who endlessly support the films and keep the animated flame burning—such as the San Francisco Film Society, which will host the San Francisco International Animation Festival (SFIAF) November 11-15, 2009 at the Landmark Embarcadero Center Cinema. SFIAF's fourth edition boasts four narrative features, a selection of shorts, and live events; a great way to become better acquainted with the overlooked genre if you're unfamiliar, and—if you're already on the hook—an opportune chance to see some of the best animated films of the year on a big screen.
The biggest draws will likely be SFIAF's features: First up, The Fantastic Mr Fox. Based on the eponymous novel by Roald Dahl, Wes Anderson's latest journeys away from live-action but retains all of the director's trademark eccentricities thanks to voice-acting from many of the actors who frequent his hit films. Shot entirely in stop-motion, Fox is the story of the titular Mr. Fox, a retired crook who risks his happy home life for one last hit on the three meanest farmers in town. Oceans 11 with George Clooney as a fox?! I can't confirm such a fantastic allegation, but I'll be attending this screening myself and my fingers are crossed. The film may open wide just a week or so later, but why not see it early and think up a swell question to ask Anderson (who is expected to attend)?
Next on the schedule is the irreverent Belgian import Panique au Village / A Town Called Panic. Twitch teammate Todd Brown writes: " 'Juvenile' and 'absurd' are perfectly good descriptors when talking about Panique, though only if they are accompanied by 'brilliant' and 'hysterical'." I've been anticipating Panique for quite some time since quickly discovering the English dub on Atom Films. Each episode follows the adventures of three toy figures—Cowboy, Indian and Horse—who share a house. Its simple setup has a big part in creating the sort of universal comedy that has crossed culture lines, the series having swiftly gained support in the UK from Aardman Animation (the studios behind Wallace and Gromit). Will the five-minute episodes translate well to feature length? Early word leans towards the positive.
A new Mamoru Oshii is always big news for animation fans, though you might be surprised to hear his latest is a samurai biopic. Stepping back from the usual action and sci-fi fare of previous efforts such as Storm Riders and Ghost in the Shell, Musashi: The Dream of the Last Samurai is more a detailed examination of the political climates that conspired to create the man who became the legendary samurai Musashi, rather than a straightforward story about his life. Using an anachronistic narrator to steer the film from sounding too much like an animated essay, Oshii's script explores both the myths and the facts but ultimately comes no closer to understanding the true identity of the mysterious samurai. Even when the film glorifies more than enlightens, Oshii's fascination with his subject shines, making Musashi an engrossing exercise in style and structure. At Twitch, Todd Brown stages his complaints while Simon Laperriere considers "ideal" the film's description as "an animated encyclopedia … since the film uses a structure similar to a book covering a wide variety of subjects all linked more or less with the same theme."
Closing the fest is Tarik Saleh's Metropia, a near-future mystery flick starring Vincent Gallo as a dissatisfied call-center employee who begins hearing voices after using a new brand of shampoo. As a slow-burn sci fi noir, Metropia is often cryptic and scattershot; but, anyone familiar with the genre knows better than to expect events to unfold in any other way. Saleh delivers enough intrigue and double-crosses, and such an interesting style of animation—big-eyed photorealistic characters that move almost like marionettes—that the plot's contrivances are negligible. At Twitch, Todd Brown writes: "Metropia fits beautifully into the canon of dystopic literature, a grim but thoroughly plausible vision of the future, a future in which progress leads to squalor rather than prosperity" whereas—though Simon Laperriere admires Metropia's "astounding" animation—he concludes the effort "disappoints."
If shorts are more your thing, Saturday brings a few compilations. The most eye-catching is The Best of Annecy (marking selections from The Annecy International Animated Film Festival), and Walt Disney's Alice Comedies, a selection gleaned from the 56 classic shorts made between 1923 and 1927 that helped launch the Disney Studios.
